Google Maps: What Unlimited Resources Deliver

December 9, 2014

There are quite a few mapping and geo outfits. But there is only one Google Maps. Whether you are into maps or not, Google Maps is a big dog in the lat long world.

When I was beavering away in Washington, DC, I had to do a job that involved one of the US government’s mapping outfits. Most government type map outfits are pretty low profile. I was in the lowest of the low profile operations and the issue was next generation maps. The government outfit had traditional mapping assets. You are familiar with some of these; for example, ESRI, European sources, and some of the giant defense contractors.

But the buzz was that Google was making maps more exciting than it normally was for geo geeks. That was shortly after Google bought Keyhole and make some of the functions available via Google’s notion of programmer friendly methods.

Flash forward six or seven years, and the information in “The Huge Unseen Operation Behind the Accuracy of Google Maps” seems like “real” news. Like so many of the breathless paean about the GOOG, the write up gains some zip due to the miserable job “real” journalists and Google cheerleaders deliver.

The map game is shifting toward the Google. Those who find Google’s investment and effort interesting should ask one question, “In what other information centric activities is Google engaged?”

Reading about Google many years after the disruption took place makes clear how little most folks know about that so handy online ad delivery company.

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining
and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky.
He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues
worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go
"beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site
with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.